Android Police: mobile version of Google Translate will be able to translate printed text and speech in real time

Universal translator Star Trek, designed to translate the speech of alien races.

Android Police technical observers claim to have screenshots of the Google Translate mobile app, which should receive a significant update. The most noticeable ones are likely to be: the application will be able to translate both the interlocutor’s speech in real time and the text in the photographs.

A few months ago, the search giant acquired WordLens(it became free), the functionality of which is to translate printed text from signboards, business cards, menus and other similar things. The meaning of such an acquisition, obviously, was to integrate this interesting “feature” into its own application, which had not received significant updates for a long time.

The screenshots below show an example of the English menu (under the spoiler) and translate it into Spanish in Live Translation mode. By the word “live”, we must understand that the translation takes place, as they say, “on the fly” - without delays or photographing, and in one of the builds of the application, the Russian language was also supported:




The second remarkable feature of the update is expected to be the ability to translate speech in a foreign language - the application “listens” to the audio stream in one language and automatically translates it into another. It is not entirely clear how the translation will take place — individual words or words in the context of the sentence (which at the time the phrase is pronounced it may not be completely clear yet), but nevertheless a “live” translation without having to type the word in the translator or try pronouncing it in an unknown language for the voice engine should be a serious step for the development of the application.

The Microsoft Reasearch research team also showed off last year A “live” translation from one language to another during a Skype video call, however, as with Google, the exact time of the update is still unknown.